Official Report
Creekside Oaks Apartments
New Hebron, California
Though Sapphira had hovered before, flying was new. He’d seen other exemplars in the news, arms spread out over their head soaring across the sky, but none of them had been using telekinesis to transport themselves through the air. He remained upright, feet parallel to the ground, and arms spread out on either side.
When he glanced down, he swallowed hard and gritted his teeth. His stomach recoiled, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. He clenched his eyes shut, forcing himself to take in a steady and even breaths. Sapphira would have to rely on his other senses. It was too damned unnerving to look down at empty air. stretched his mind out, extending his other senses to compensate for his lack of sight and his awareness spread out. He felt the wind against his cheeks, smelled food cooking thousands of feet below and even sensed people and other animals moving about.
It appeared he did not need his eyes to form a picture of the world around him. Everything seemed much brighter and more vivid if he concentrated enough he sensed everything about the world around him right down to the molecular level.
He discerned a child growing in the womb of a woman far down below. The fetus had only just developed, and he believed it was too soon for the woman to know it was there. He sensed the fragments of metal in the leg of a man, shrapnel which had been embedded in his flesh while serving in the military.
People were not the only things which he sensed, a squirrel scurried about on the ground unaware that a hawk was about to swoop down from above and claim it as its meal. An aging truck with clogged fuel injectors, a snake slithering around inside the walls and floorboards of a home unbeknownst to the human inhabitants, and water running through pipes deep underground. All of these things and more were open to him.
His mind couldn’t process the sheer volume of information that was being fed to him. He grunted and let his eyes snap back open before closing his psychic senses. His stomach heaved in protest as he looked out at the brilliant blue expanse before him, but it was preferable to the alternative.
He was never so grateful when he sensed he was getting close to his destination. He threw his hands up, gritted his teeth and eased himself into a steady descent. Soon, his feet touched the ground in front of an apartment building and he craned his neck around looking for signs of the AEGIS agents who’d been tailing him. It was unlikely they would have been able to follow him from so far below, but it didn’t hurt to be sure.
He approached the building, and when he got to the door, he found that it locked. There was a buzzer with an intercom, but he saw no reason for anyone to let him in. That wasn’t much a deterrent for him. He reached out with his mind, focusing all his will around the lock. The mechanism relied on a simple electrical circuit, and once he trigger it, the door popped open.
His target was close. He did not know his exact location, but he was somewhere above him and just a little north. The building wasn’t very large, and while the interior was clean and well kept up, it was a lower-middle-income apartment building. There would be no security. He navigated the hallways, wandering until he found an elevator. When he reached out to touch a button, he realized that his hand was no longer gloved. His costume was gone replaced by the illusory blue blouse and his regular clothes. It was just, no need to call undue attention to himself.
When he stopped on the second floor, he still sensed his target above, so he let the elevator take him up to the third level. He stepped out once the doors were open and took a right. He felt him now… he was close.
Sapphira followed the corridor and stopped just outside a door. There was nothing to distinguish it from the rest, save the number. He paused, took a deep breath and traced his hands over the numerals. His whole body quivered in anticipation, but only when he was close did he experience doubt.
What if this was a trap?
He bit his lip, took a step back and gritted his teeth. He’d come all this way, he would not let himself chicken out now. Sapphira threw both hands out, sending out a wave of telekinetic energy, shattering the doorframe, just as he had the door to Amelia’s house and sent it shooting open.
Silence greeted him. Still, a little dubious, Sapphira stepped inside, glancing in all directions and reached out looking for some trap. When he detected nothing he moved further into the dark apartment. He stopped just outside the bedroom door, detecting the first signs of any habitation. A whirring sound, so faint he doubted he would have been able to detect it before his transformation, was coming from within the room.
He hesitated again before turning the knob and pushed the door open. Light spilled into the room through a set of curtains that weren’t quite closed. A figure rested atop the bed, and as Sapphira edged closer his eyes took in all the details.
The figure was an African American man, hooked up to some sort of breathing apparatus, and he looked to be asleep. Sapphira froze and his rage came boiling to the surface.
Though he had aged in the last twenty years there was no doubt in Sapphira’s mind. It was his daughter’s killer.